Pipe Man, the six-metre-high, black-plastic pipe with a silhouette of Thomson, will join a long list of public art that seemed like a good idea at the time.Dawn Huddlestone/Huntsville Doppler/The Globe and Mail
Orson Welles, or whoever first said this, got it wrong.
"I don't know anything about art, but I know what I like," should really have been: "But I sure know what I hate."
A moment of silence, please, for the poor Pipe Man of Huntsville.
The beauty of Muskoka will continue to be fall leaves and pristine waters. And while it may include the paintings of Tom Thomson, it will no longer involve the six-metre-high, black-plastic pipe with a silhouette of Thomson that floated for the best part of a year in the middle of the Muskoka River just before it flows under the Main Street bridge.
At a town council meeting this week, Jan Nyquist of Pipefusion Services, a local builder of floating docks, asked if the town would return his $50,000 gift so he could bring an end to a controversy that has at times split this pretty little Ontario tourist town of 20,000.
Mr. Nyquist had had enough of the negativity.
And so, Pipe Man will join a long, long list of public art that seemed like a good idea at the time.
He joins the statue to former prime minister Arthur Meighen that was commissioned back in Centennial year, only to turn out so badly that even Meighen's wife could not bear to look at it. "The greatest monstrosity ever produced," harangued another former PM, John Diefenbaker, a friend and admirer of Meighen. "A mixture of Ichabod Crane and Daddy Longlegs."
Instead of showing the statue on Parliament Hill, the government instead hid it in a vault near the Rideau Canal for 20 years, then sent it off to St. Mary's, Ont., near where Meighen was born.
That, however, was nothing compared with the reaction shown a commissioned statue to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, which she herself unveiled in 1998. The public so disliked it that a London theatre producer took it upon himself to fix things by hiding a cricket bat in his pants and attacking the statue until he beheaded it. "I think it looks better like that," he told the police who came to arrest him.
No one vandalized Pipe Man, but not enough people defended him.
It had all begun so innocently. Mr. Nyquist, a popular local businessman, wanted to give something back to the community. The new mayor, Scott Aitchison, had hopes for bringing in new public art to the town. Murals on the sides of buildings depicting works of the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson had proved popular with tourists – perhaps something artistic could be added to the mix.
Mr. Nyquist and his staff wanted whatever it was to be built from the plastic materials that were revolutionizing the area dock industry. He commissioned local artist Beverley Hawksley – mother of well-known musician Hawksley Workman but increasingly an artist of national reputation herself – to come up with something that could be etched into the material, and she did a lovely silhouette of Thomson in a familiar pose. They then anchored it vertically in the middle of the river, where it spun and bobbed for months. (Not surprisingly, the phallic jokes were endless.)
Some thought it lovely, even amusing. Others complained it was ugly, it was advertising, it was in the way of boats, it was bringing ridicule to the town.
The mayor was comfortable with all the talk. Public art, he said, should engage people, and the people of Huntsville were certainly engaged.
There was much pressure to move it out of such a central position and council eventually agreed to run an online survey over the summer. People could speak out on whether Pipe Man should be kept where it is, moved elsewhere – or got rid of completely.
They got 1,392 responses – 90-per-cent negative. Voters were anonymous and allowed to vote twice. The fact that 835 computers tried to access the survey a third time certainly should have raised a red flag.
"I have a problem with the veracity of surveys that are not scientifically driven," says former mayor Hugh Mackenzie. "It was nothing more than an invitation to the naysayers to vent their spleen. The result was predictable and divisive."
Earlier in the fall, council met again to deal with the survey results. They held a vote on whether to remove Pipe Man or else work toward finding a less obtrusive place for him to float. With the vote tied, Mr. Aitchison cast the tie-breaker in favour of further discussions toward finding a more favourable location.
"We didn't want to play that game," Mr. Nyquist says. He met with his staff and with Ms. Hawksley, the artist, and they decided that the original site in the river had been the right one at the time and, for them, remained the right one. "We didn't want to engage in a forum that basically was, 'Where is a good spot where it won't upset anybody?'"
So on Tuesday evening, they offered, without the slightest offence, to take it back, at Pipefusion's expense, and forget about the whole thing.
"The survey was a mistake and Pipe Man should still be there," says former mayor Mr. Mackenzie. "Instead we had a public pissing match which was not good for Huntsville, and a goodwill gesture by a community-minded businessman was turned upside down."
"I feel bad," says Mr. Aitchison, who felt he had started the whole thing in the first place and publicly apologized to Mr. Nyquist at Tuesday's meeting. "Maybe it was my mistake as a rookie mayor."
Mr. Aitchison, like Mr. Mackenzie, feels there are dangers inherent in a non-scientific survey that not only allows repeat voters but allows them to do so anonymously. "There are people out there who actually seemed to enjoy hating it," he says. "Those people who really loved to hate it took it as their opportunity to have some say."
The artist, Ms. Hawksley, mercifully suffered none of the backlash. "People have been very kind about it," she says. "I haven't had a whole lot of comment directed toward me."
Since Pipe Man was taken away, she says, she has had a growing sense that "some people are missing it. Maybe the next movement will be 'Let's bring it back!'"
"We will do something with it," Mr. Nyquist says. "Maybe it will go where someone will appreciate it."
In fact, one of the councillors did ask Mr. Nyquist at Tuesday's meeting if there were any future plans for Pipe Man. Mr. Nyquist replied that there are none at the moment, but that Pipe Man "may rise again."
To which Mr. Aitchison quipped: "Hopefully, my political career does, too."